Noted.

HEALTH AND WEALTH: As the White House begins a push for healthcare reform, it starts at a significant disadvantage, perhaps as large as $1.38 billion. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures, that's the sum that five industries--pharmaceuticals/ health products, insurance, health services/HMOs, hospitals/nursing homes and health professionals--spent lobbying lawmakers from 2007, the first full year Democrats controlled Congress, to the most recent first-quarter filings for 2009.

In fact, starting in 2006 healthcare interests have spent even more than the financial services industry to sway lawmakers. Since 1998, three of the top ten lobbying spenders have sought to influence healthcare policy; the American Medical Association's $204 million in the past decade was second only to the perennial top lobbyist, the US Chamber of Commerce. Beyond lobbying, hundreds of millions have been spent by healthcare interests in campaign contributions in the past two election cycles alone.

So what does all this money buy? According to Nate Silver, renowned number-cruncher and blogger at FiveThirtyEight.com, a whole lot. Silver crafted a method to measure how lobbying might be shaping Democratic senators' votes on a healthcare bill with a public option--which 76 percent of Americans support, according to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll--and concluded that the low sum of $60,000 in campaign contributions over the past six years would cut in half the odds of a centrist Democrat supporting the plan.   SEBASTIAN JONES

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